The Broken Rose – Warnings and Foreword

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII, its characters, and settings are all property of Square Enix so I can take no credit nor claim any ownership of that. I do take some credit for the story’s plot.

Banner Artwork Disclaimer: The featured artwork for the banner is entitled White rose I and was created by the very talented Deviant Artist RemusSirion who was gracious enough to grant me permission to use it here. The picture has been slightly altered from the original. All rights belong to the artist, and links are included for both the artist page and the work.

Abused and tormented for over a century, the last Cetra finds strangest salvation.

A novel length FFVII fanfiction with additional chapters added as I edit them.

*******MAJOR CONTENT WARNING*******

I cannot express enough the magnitude and myriads of warnings this story has for content. It is almost safe to say it has all of them. Please read at your own discretion and feel free to stop at any time if it becomes overwhelming. Even while I was writing and editing it, I had to take numerous breaks and/or switch gears for the evening because it became too much for me to bear.

The Broken Rose takes place in a similar AU world to my other novel length fanfiction Northern Lights with only slight variations. The setting is the same seaside town that Aeris and Sephiroth end up in that prior tale. Reading NL might help ground you in the location, but it’s not really necessary. I can’t speak to whether or not having played FFVII is integral to enjoying this tale. I want to say it isn’t especially considering the subject matter and the reason I wrote it, but I’ve had people who weren’t familiar with the game express they found Northern Lights a bit inaccessible in terms of understanding the significance of their relationship. It was there, but the details and magnitude couldn’t be fully comprehended without the experience of the game.

The Broken Rose converged from several sources, and I must give credit where credit is due and laud the appropriate authors. One of the main inspirations is a fanfiction entitled The Smell of Lilies, an FFVII AU that occurs prior to the Nibelheim Incident by AO3 author Up_sideand_down.

The second inspiration is one of my favorite fanfictions Slumbering Mountains by Fanfiction.net author mihojonagi. It takes place after canon where both Aeris and Sephiroth are revived by a particular individual for selfish and depraved purposes.

I obviously highly recommend both of these stories. The Smell of Lilies is a short one-shot whereas Slumbering Mountains is novel length.

TBR was supposed to be a brief 10k word venture to see if I could write a story about horrendous abuse as a sort of practice for an original paranormal romance I’m planning. In the original the assault happens once and (as such things do) utterly alters the main character’s world view. It doesn’t feel right to say that TBR is more brutal because it happens more times than can be counted, because just once is enough. Just once is a murder upon the psyche, a ravaging of the soul. Can you multiply infinity? But in ways TBR is perhaps portrayed more brutally because of the longevity and severity of the abuse.

I am not a glutton for punishment, nor am I doing this for shock value. Rather the entire point of this story is to show how victims/survivors of such horrors should be treated. Given the current climate, I wish stories like this were in greater abundance by far more relevant writers, authors of renown instead of just me (though I’ve heard the show Jessica Jones does a bang up job).

Every single chapter will have that content warning at the top, because it is prevalent throughout the entire tale. Please don’t hesitate to send me a message through Contacts and of course comments are always more than welcome.

Yes! I finally made good on my promises hehe. I’m so thrown off right now. We set our clocks back so it’s 9:00 instead of 10:00 and my body is very confused, but since it’s still relatively early I want to work on the FFIV review, too 🙂

You too?! It’s throwing me off so much. I left work and it was dark. I mean I’m totally okay with eternal darkness, but it’s kind of off putting. To be honest, I’d prefer more light at the end of the day. I don’t get why daylight savings is still around *grumbles*

Absolutely incredible writing Adrienne. That first chapter was difficult to read but I was immediately sucked in because of Aeris. I find it ironic that she keeps insisting she’s weak when she survived so many years of torment and abuse. I’m looking forward to seeing how the relationship between her and the General plays out. I can’t wait for Chapter 6.💁🏻

Thank you so much Kim! Ugh, the first chapter was so harrowing. I put off editing the story for over a week after I completed it because I knew what I’d have to do. I also read aloud when I edit, and it’s so much worse when you hear those terrible words aloud. I’m so glad you liked it ♥

And, as you said it’s so timely as well. I can’t imagine how difficult it was writing that first chapter. But it was necessary to set up the characters and the following chapters. I swear, I just wanted to reach in and hug Aeris, but then I realized I’d traumatize her further!

Honestly every story I write has that “omg I hate this part” moment. Most of them occur further in, but this (and Northern Lights) have the “I hate this” chapter right at the start so I get it out of the way. Other stories build up to it and it’s this omnipresent thing hanging over my head until I get beyond it. One novel didn’t have it until Chapter 11 and then another one in Chapter 25. So. Stressful.

You might be okay because you’re familiar with it a bit! Or at least familiar with video games. I think the person who told me that wasn’t up on either. My one friend who’s more of a PC gamer was able to read and follow Northern Lights, but I think a few non-gamer bloggers have read NL, too, and they were fine!

Hell I’m tired from posting two chapters on tumblr. The formatting there is such a bitch because you can’t copy and paste in italics. It just doesn’t come over (or I don’t know how to make it come over) so I have to go through and add it manually D: